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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29099418">Kino Indiana Round Robin Starters</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maksvell/pseuds/Maksvell'>Maksvell</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Kino - Indiana, Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Assassins &amp; Hitmen, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Psychedelic Dreams, Alternate Universe - Radio, Assassins &amp; Hitmen, Bears, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon Non-Binary Character, Codes &amp; Ciphers, Cryptids, Cryptozoology, Detective Noir, Detectives, F/F, F/M, Film Noir, Gen, Gore, Government Conspiracy, Government Experimentation, Haunted Houses, High School, Horror, Hunters &amp; Hunting, M/M, Multi, Mutilation, Mystery, Other, People Hunting, Psychedelic, Pulp, Pulp Science Fiction, Radio, Recreational Drug Use, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Horror, Serial Killers, Spies &amp; Secret Agents, Survival Horror, Tw Indiana, Underage Drug Use, cryptograms, some racist characters</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:20:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,030</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29099418</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maksvell/pseuds/Maksvell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>I created a series of short stories set in the town of Kino, Indiana. A town set up by the government to house and subtly experiment on those seen as extra-normal. A breeding ground for future spies, scientific horrors, detectives and killers.  The idea is you read the first part and then you add to it however you choose. If you are reading this, select a chapter, read it and now the story is in your hands. Just be sure to send me a link to whatever you do.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Inez Darío - The Assignment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">The air of his office smelled like old desert foods. Saccharine and familiar, but different. Standing and staring out of his window was Brenton’s elusive Principal, Miles Pine. He was a picture of a boring individual. He dressed in a plain t-shirt, a pair of boring brown trousers, and a pair of worn leather shoes. If you were to pass by him on the street you wouldn’t recognize him if you were to see him again. To Inez Darío, he was good old Mister Pine, her mentor.</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">He turned and looked down at the girl, although not by much. He only stood about six inches taller than her. She combed her curly dark hair back with her fingers, a habit she had since she was a young girl.</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“Inez, I have a task of incredible importance for you.” He said. Because, of course, he did.</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“What is it, sir?”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“The school, as you are aware caters to the next generation that will run the nation. This includes scientists. I have a student who might prove to be a problem in the future and I need you to keep an eye on them.”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“Done. Who’s the student, sir?”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“Temple Pierce. But, this case is not just a simple watching assignment. If I wanted you to stalk them, I would ask Marcus June or one of his brothers. Pierce has proven to be two things: Difficult and brilliant. They have selective mutism, which makes it rather difficult to get anything out of them, but they have a brilliant mind for memorization and the carrying out of tasks. Even if they devote a good deal of their energy on special interests like engineering and philosophy.”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“And why are they of interest, sir? Potential mad scientists are a dime a dozen.”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“Yes, but we would like to keep them under our thumb, would it not benefit us for them to be on our side?”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“I guess.”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“So, the task is simple. Befriend Pierce and study them. If they are doing anything that might harm the country in the future report it to me, and keep them from being hurt by your peers.”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“Why do I need to do that?”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">“They are not a very physical person. Their older brother, Grant was a fighter of sorts. He works for one of the agencies overseas with Houston, now. But, I need you to keep them in check. I don’t want yet another wannabe Doctor Moreau wandering the halls.”</span>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p> </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <span class="">Mister Pine visibly shook as he remembered such a terrifying incident.</span>
  </p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Miriam Brooks - Astor House</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Young Detective Miriam Brooks decides to investigate the local haunted house. How fun.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>The soft beam of Miriam Brook's flashlight just barely cut through the abyssal darkness. Like many of her age, she grew up in the town of Kino, Indiana and she, along with everybody else in Kino had heard a story about the Astor House.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Many of the children and even a fair few adults had one story or another to tell about how the Astor House came to be.  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Beatrix Kuroki told her once that she heard from an older girl that the house belonged to one of the town's founders who took his own life after killing his adulterous fiance and her lover.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Ryan Murphy once said that the house was a meeting ground for Satanists and other assorted devil worshipers. He used to make up some older brother who vanished after going into the house. Even though he always used a different name with each telling of the story.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She tried to force the stories to the back of her mind. She'd be lying if she said that they hadn't started to creep to the front of her mind as she watched the moon's light cast cruel shadows using the limbs of Astor House's bare trees as her flashlight ran up the ancient rusted bars of the wrought iron fence.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Miguel Jimenez - Anatomy Lesson</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Young scientists learning to enjoy the art of directing eldritch abominations.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="">
  <p>The instructor paced up and down the aisle between tables. Despite the number of tables, the class’ students were all crowded around a single operating table at the head of the classroom, surveying the cadaver with rapt attention</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Now, ” began the instructor as he did a turn on the heels of his very worn leather shoes. “Can anybody identify the corpse before you?“</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miguel Jimenez spoke up, "It’s a Smythian thing, yeah? A being from an adjacent dimension.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Very good mister Jimenez can you please explain the reasoning behind your conclusion?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miguel cleared his throat and took a small ballpoint pen from the pocket of his jeans. Using the pen as a lever he thrust it into a wound on what the class presumed to be the being’s chest and then lifted the skin enabling a semi-solid ladder of greenish fluid to form in the air above the wound.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“The body doesn’t react well with the physics of our reality. It is showing signs of deterioration but it doesn’t carry with it the stink of rot.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Once again the top-notch display from you Mr Jimenez, “ privately the instructor smiled to himself out of pride. “Now, we have the great fortune of having six intact specimens at our disposal. Mostly due to an unforeseen tragedy that occurred earlier this week. You will all be placed into pairs and you will have to catalogue each being’s organs and place them in jars.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The students were led into the classrooms cold storage space. It was essentially a walk-in freezer with a stainless steel wall inch thick metal door to prevent break-ins and 6 operating tables each with a very bright light hanging above them while each table supported an unknowable corpse.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It didn’t take long for the other students to partner up and Miguel decided to go with a more familiar option. She decided to partner up with Temple. It was mostly a partnership of convenience and familiarity as the two students had partnered up in the past. Neither minded the arrangement of course. Miguel preferred the company of Temple to most of the other students primarily because they were absurdly quiet and didn’t fuck around while working. Plus it didn’t hurt that they were easy on the eyes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The pair’s corpse would have stood around six feet and eight inches. Its face resembled an odd combination of a catfish with a housefly. In place of a proper mouth like that of a fish was a mess of cruel tentacles and insect-like feelers. While it’s were bulbous and compound.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miguel used a scalpel to remove the tentacles on the lower portion of its face handing them over to Temple to jar them. The act brought to mind, a moment from his childhood where he helped his grandmother jar peaches on a farm a little way south of French Lick. The being’s skin had an unusual property to it. It superficially resembled the tentacles of an octopus, but they lacked suction cups of any kind and the texture and smell of the meat reminded both of them of mushrooms.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>After jarring the mouth tentacles Temple cleared away the viscera that caked the meat on its lower face. They came to reveal that the being had a strange sort of beak that might have at some point acted as a mouth. This led both of them to speculate that the being might have been some sort of an advanced cephalopod type of thing. But that he did not account for the but that Theory did not account for the fact that the being’s flesh seems to be sort made out of some sort of mycelium.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miguel glanced over at Temple who was working one of the beast’s many arms trying to get an idea of how it might have moved when it was alive. For some odd reason, Temple was smiling and act that Miguel did not catch quite often and then became clear after a minute or so that he was staring.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Beatrix Kuroki - The Wild Hunt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Beatrix Kuroki daughter of the infamous Haze gets hunted.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>She found herself surrounded in a deep Abyssal void with only her own hands being visible. She attempted to move about but she felt like she was moving through gelatin with limbs being weighed down by great invisible weights. A sudden glow interrupted the darkness, there was a figure floating just a little ways away from her in the void. The figure seemed to radiate a form of light that wasn’t quite there is that make sense. She recognized her immediately compare brilliant brown eyes and her crown of curly dark hair, it was her classmate Miriam. While they had never spoken to one another Beatrix found herself to be somewhat infatuated with her. she attempted to call out to Miriam but found her voice choked by something she wasn’t quite sure what but she found it remarkably difficult to speak. the dream - Miriam turned to face her even though she didn’t really make a sound.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“It’s curious how the fox is both prey and predator, depending on the company present, ” spoke the figure like it was being played through a tinny old speaker.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Before Beatrix could say anything to retort she was woken up with a sudden stinging pain in her cheek. Her eyes fluttered open and she was laying on her side in the slightly moistened dirt of the Woods.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She recognised the standing above her as Franklin Rohmer, she had seen him before at some school meeting along with his son it was in her Espionage career track. He was with two other men who she assumed were relatives of his due to their thinning blond hair. They were all dressed in gaudy red waistcoats khaki riding trousers and very very improbable like-higher high boots. Each of them brandished cumbersome hunting knives and Franklin had a riding crop in his other hand.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Evening officer Rohmer. What’s the deal with the goofy getup?” She said, very unwilling to be overwhelmed by the abject horror of her new situation.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Kuroki, you have been selected to be the prey of The Wild Hunt.” He said, ignoring her snide comment.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Fuck that. Take me back to the school dormitory and I’ll forget that this ever happened. Besides, isn’t the Wild Hunt a Norse tradition? If so, why are you dressed like English fox hunters?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Rohmer only laughed at this, a great big idiotic bellow, “Clearly your heritage, has handicapped your comprehension. It’s about pageantry!”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“But you’re mixing up you’re weird dumb traditions. You don’t understand the huge mistake that you’re making.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I understand perfectly. Now, go run off so that we can have a proper hunt.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Fella, my pops is going to make earrings out of your balls. That is. If he gets to you first.” She gave the Rohmers a smile before fleeing into the woods.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Temple Pierce - The Watchers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A first-person perspective story where Temple Pierce is followed.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>I was being followed. I know for certain that I am correct. My brother once told me a simple truth, twice is a coincidence, thrice is suspicious. Granted, my brother is prone to fits of paranoid delusions such, is common in his line of work. But, that does not mean that he is not often correct.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>I cannot overlook the facts as they stand. At twelve-thirteen I was in the school’s library, looking over a neat volume I found on medical engineering when I was approached by another student. We had not spoken before that moment, but she walked up to me and said…Something, surely. </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The fault did not fall onto her. At that moment, I experienced a slight loss in my ability to process speech so she mostly just sounded like she was speaking gibberish because I was not focusing on her words. I was unsure of how to respond and did not want to admit to not understanding her. So, I packed up my things and fled the library. I could have chalked that up to being a very awkward situation and that I would never have to speak to her again. But then I saw her again. I was on my way to my next class, following the library encounter when I noticed her just behind me. She was mirroring the way I moved through the crowd with her arms held limp at her sides. Was she mocking me?</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>I continued to see her throughout the day, mirroring my movements and seeming to be just a step behind me, without fail. By the time the last bell sounded, I had worked out a plan to avoid her. I fled the school through a side exit that led out into Roland Street. I figured that would provide me with enough cover as it was next to the woods to hide me from her sight.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>As I left the building and jogged down the sidewalk next to the woods I felt my pulse calm and I felt a sense of peace, free from the watchful eye of a curious stranger.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>A sound that cut through my peace and made my heart start to pound like a drum. Leather soles against the sidewalk’s surface. I peered behind me to if I was being followed by that girl again. I was not. But, I did not calm. Behind me was a new stranger who I had not seen before. A student, around my age. A boy. Now, I am not good at recognizing body language in the slightest, but the way he moved frightened me. His whole essence made me feel insignificant and for the life of me, I cannot explain why I felt so afraid of this boy. The two shared something, but I could not explain what it was. Physically they could not have been more different. But, at least when she was following me I did not feel like the prey of an apex predator.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Miriam Brooks - Barely Hidden Secrets</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>What's a young detective to do in a town crawling with mysteries and conspiracies to do?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>The summer air was given a sharp nick by a cool breeze. Miriam decided to wear a hoodie that day when she took her trip into town. She was given a warning from her father about the heat and proceeded to ignore him. He had been born in Kino, so August felt scorching to him. Miriam had on for better or for worse inherited her mother’s Floridian genes.  The dead of an Indiana summer could never compare to the hellish heat of the so-called Sunshine State.  Besides, Miriam often found herself uncomfortable without something covering her arms in public. She figured it was an anxiety thing. Miriam felt exposed with her arms out in the open for all the world to see.  She preferred to be in her brown and black hoodie. When paired with her rounded sunglasses and dark brown eyes caused her to resemble an owl. Not that anybody had ever said that to her before.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her path led into the town square, where she spied Officer Rohmer stalking around just outside of Ebert’s Tattoo Parlor. She took an alley passage to avoid him. It was bad enough that he was a racist prick he was also in a constant foul mood because Miriam’s mom just so happened to be his boss. There was a third vileness to him that she couldn’t place.  It brought to mind a story that she heard when she was about seven or maybe eight. She went on a camping trip with her parents and their friend Mister Darío and his daughter Inez. He told them all, over the campfire an old local myth told between hunters. The Not-Deer were said to be these gaunt cannibalistic stags that wandered around the forest picking off a would-be hunter’s game right before he could finish the kill. Rohmer gave her the same sense of unearthly dread as Marcos Darío’s story about the deer.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She cut through the back area of the dollar store then she was to some end home free. She climbed up the steps and into the building, shutting the door behind her with a sigh of relief.  She stood in the C.A Guffey library. The one thing she didn’t despise about Kino.  The town had sunk in a good percentage of it’s funds to keep the library around and up to date.  Plus, one of the librarians Ms Feighery used wax melts to make the building smell like lilacs.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Inez took a stroll to the very back, towards the biography section to see if they had the book that she ordered. They did not, but she did notice an anomaly as she scanned the shelves. Somebody had misplaced a copy of Gray’s Anatomy.  The plain white book seemed to jut out slightly as she came to it. She took it out, fully intending to put it in the proper place, but it had been a little over a year since she had looked through it, so she decided to give it a glance.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She took a walk over to an empty table and sat down to thumb through the worn volume.  She recalled everything exactly and was feeling assured that her memory of the contents was intact. Then she reached page twenty-six. At the foot of the page, under a wall of text was a series of numbers. They were barely erased to the point that she could make them out quite clearly.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>
      <strong>2524332243   3444231542</strong>
    </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>On the next page more numbers in the same state:</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <em>
      <strong>13113215313444   231143  4423244244151533</strong>
    </em>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>And the next:</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>
    <strong>
      <em>113314   343315   4344153543.</em>
    </strong>
  </p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>At first, she was confused and rather upset that somebody could ever deface a book. Especially one that belonged to the library of all places. She didn’t get it at first but she looked over the faded pencilled in numbers and realized that they weren’t random. They were exact. Two numbers in pairs. She felt like a child on Halloween after a night of trick or treating. It was a code. A Polybius Square Cipher.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She dug out her little notepad and began to make the Polybius Square and deciphered the string of numbers.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p><em><strong>Kings other Camelot has thirteen and one steps</strong></em>, read the message by the end.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Miriam Brooks and Beatrix Kuroki - Absent Friends</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Grief is a funny thing. What is one to do when a classmate dies before they ever really got the chance to live?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>Beatrix liked the word necropolis. She found it to be more accurate than Cemetery or graveyard. Kino's Cemetery especially resembled the word, with its close together high rise granite tombstones. At that point in time, she had only been to one other funeral in her life, the first was when she was seven or six when one of her dad's uncles had passed on. She couldn't remember feeling one way or the other about him or the ceremony honouring his life but there was something hauntingly beautiful about the Zōshigaya Cemetery. Even Kino's Cemetery try couldn't hold a candle to it.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The corpse in the cast that had belonged to a classmate by the name of Caelan Stillman. He was gifted in two areas of study namely deductive reasoning and visual art. His final work happened just shortly before his untimely death when he supposedly painted his wall grey and red with his father's revolver. Beatrix couldn't say that she knew him very well. Hell, most of the students outside of the detective career track probably didn't know him that well either and probably attended the funeral out of some misplaced sense of Duty or because their parents dragged them there, didn't make much of a difference to her, either way, she was just there because it felt odd it felt unnatural that any of them should be at that age to see one of them die.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The Wake was an oddly colourful affair. After the body was laid to rest most of the funeral party went up to The Kino Temple. The Kino Temple was mostly a pan-religious sort of deal, it wasn't affiliated with one religion or one sect of religion in particular but it was also the only religious building in town. Their more religious residence of the town was granted certain periods of the month that they were able to use the building without coming into conflict with any other believers. As a result of the building's owners decided to make it a very Bland neutral Source place that resulted in it resembling a prefabricated house with grey and beige walls and wide-open spaces for people to do whatever. At that moment the entire open floor was littered with plastic tables from a local Big Box store set display various potluck style Foods.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam Brooks spied Ryan Murphy eating a raspberry scone while clumsily flirting with Miguel Jimenez over by the restrooms. She wanted to go over and chat with him about the funeral and the death of their classmate but she felt it would be best to just wait until he was done chatting up Jimenez. A very odd thing about the Wake was those Stillman's decision to display their late son's artwork rather than pictures of the boy. Off in a corner, she noticed the siblings Pierce quietly arguing in front of a massive watercolour painting showing a black tree made up of hands reaching up to the Sun. The painting unnerved her greatly.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Beatrix thought it was beautiful both the painting and the girl with the crown of curly hair that was observing it. There seem to be very few walls that weren't lined with some kind of picture. On the western wall, she could see a projection of bit of black and white film showing the Beatles' Shea Stadium concert only John Lennon's face had been replaced with a mass of insect legs that were constantly chittering and twitching. Her attention tried to go back to the girl who was looking at the black hand painting but she had vanished.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam ventured out to the graveyard, she had her fill with Reuben dip and Instructor Alvarez his rantings about the tragic life of the real Christopher Robin. The sun had set and the Darkness was beginning to encroach on the town. Miriam found them out by the gravestones, she could see them by the glow of their cigarettes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Ryan Murphy sat with his back against an ancient headstone while Amy Drummond and Colin Patel stood by casually observing their friend as he chattered. The three of them, plus Miriam herself made up the surviving members of the detective career track.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"It's fucking bizarre in there, " spoke Muphy who had a smug grin on his lips.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Tell me about it, " began Patel as he took a drag off of his cigarette. "Like a skull wearing greasepaint."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"I'd say, " spoke Drummond.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"No need to be too gloomy. Me, I'm feeling fantastic."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam moved around in the darkness slowly creeping up behind Murphy, "You're only feeling fantastic because you spent five minutes chatting with Jimenez."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Murphy's entire body seized all at once like he had been struck in the back with a knife, "Jesus fuck."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>In his moment of surprise, Murphy had dropped his cigarette in the grass causing the flame to be extinguished by the dew. His friends, of course, laughed at him as he searched around for his last cigarette.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Yer goddamn terrifying, you know that?"</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"I make a point of it."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Murphy, having found his missing cigarette and proceeded to blow smoke into Miriam's face blowing about her curly locks.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Come on don't be a dick because you're skittish, " chided Patel.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>" I'm not being a dick I'm just sharing nicotine's loving embrace with our good pal." He said like an obnoxious knob.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Amy had elected to ignore him but did find Colin's comment somewhat funny.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"So, what are you after Brooks? You normally don't bother with us unless you're looking to collaborate."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>But then with all the gentleness and subtlety of a thrown brick, Miriam spoke, " I think Stillman was murdered."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Piss off, " spoke Amy.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>" I'm being serious there's something about his death that just doesn't sit well with me."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>" Miriam, " began Patel. " Did you consider that you might not be taking Caelan's death well?"</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"No, this is completely different doesn't it seem a little surreal to you guys?"</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Brooks just face the fact that Stills is dead. That feeling in your gut that things are fucked is grief, man."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>" yeah just be like Ryan and get it on with that weird nerd from the science track."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Piss off, Drums."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Detectives we should at least do a cursory investigation or...or something."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Detectives in training, Miriam. Besides what are we to do we are only teenagers with absolutely no authority over anything, " he gesticulated with his arms to indicate the larger world, "So, I recommend you sleep off this Nancy Drew nonsense and get on with your life."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Beatrix left the temple in sort of a nauseous daze. Inside she drinking about 6 cups of caffeinated hot chocolate and needed somewhere to lay down while she recovered. In the darkness, she could see the flicker of Lighters and the glow of cigarettes amongst the tombstones. She quieted her breathing and allowed herself to focus on the conversation. A girl Miriam was trying to plead with the others to help her with an investigation.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>As the other three members of the detective career track up and left Beatrix decided to approach. Miriam was sitting alone in the darkness Among the Tombstones</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>In order to not startle her, Beatrix dug out her cell phone and turn on the flashlight function so as to not startle her. This had the exact opposite effect. The girl very nearly leapt out of her skin.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Shit. Sorry, I am so sorry." She said hoping that Miriam would not detect her awkwardness. She did, but it was inconsequential. "I'm...Hi, I'm Beatrix."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam looked at the girl with big inquisitive green eyes as the shorter girl extended a hand to her, "it's fine, I'm Miriam."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Beatrix withdrew her hand, "I heard those two assholes beating their gums and talking down to you."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam looked at her. The strange girl had an odd Patois, like Humphrey Bogart. She tried to ignore it, "So, I take it you overheard me too, yeah?"</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The taller girl slumped against a tombstone and hung her head, "You probably think I'm crazy to just like them."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Actually I believe you."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam made a dismissive sound, "yeah, I bet."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"No, no, I'm serious. I'm not talking down to you. It's probably possible and I want to help you."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam practically left the ground when she shot up, "Really?"</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam's brilliant green eyes seemed to shine in the light of Beatrix's phone and she felt her heartache, "Yes."</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Irwin Rohmer - Guts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I hated writing this chapter more than you can ever imagine. It is a horrible, gore filled mess. Rohmer is what happens when a budding serial killer also has the same skills as James Bond.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>The mound of hair and meat reminded him of steak for some weird reason. Like hot steak. Like steak, if it could somehow be immeasurably hot without cooking. He clenched his fists and pulled out whatever his tiny little hands could latch onto.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The mounds of organs seemed to glow with brilliant and vibrant colours in his hands. Colours he didn’t think occurred naturally. The entire scene looked like a grotesque blacklight poster. With his drenched hands, he formed a small pyramid on the rug, using the intestines which were a glowing a neon yellow like a glowstick all the while dripping some unknown electric orange goop.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Irwin hadn’t been this turned on since he watched his dad run down a deer in his pickup truck.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The liver and the heart were the only organs that didn’t glow. Instead, they seemed to be tinted a very dark shade of red. So dark it was almost black. He wiped his hands off as best he could on his t-shirt. He’d probably burn that later on trash day.  As he finished up his crooked task he made his way to the window he came in through.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The silly bitch was practically asking for it, he thought to himself as he leapt out the opening, taking great care to not leave any real evidence behind. The boy went off into the woods to take care of that pesky kitchen knife. The gunk from the intestines was still warm and carried with it a wet copper smell. But, by the time he reached the creek, it had stopped glowing orange.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Eighty-Two-year-old Marlene Kline awoke to a cold bed. It had been the first time in five years that she had woken up to a cold bed. She figured the last time she did was that month after her Robert died. She had been relying on her pom-chi Anita-Belle to warm her at night. But, Anita-Belle was nowhere to be seen. It was around ten in the morning, so the thing should have at least been yipping at passing cars. But, there was only a dull silence. She sat up and slowly got up to put on a pair of dollar store flip flops to investigate what happened to her pup.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She caught the first whiff of it as she rounded the corner and into the kitchen. A foul rotten meat stench filled her lungs and sent her into a brief fit of coughing as she ploughed forward and into the gruesome scene.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Anita-Belle had been bisected and most of her guts were scattered about the room haphazardly. Save for her intestines, which were placed in a nice neat pile at the centre of her living room rug.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Marlene Kline stood there with eyes as wide as silver dollars. She couldn’t help it. What sat before here didn’t quite seem real. It didn’t seem like something that should be. She gave a dreadfully tight wheeze. It began in her chest. A strange tightness like somebody was squeezing her very old heart like it was a stress toy.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She collapsed in seconds and died in minutes.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Across the street Irwin watched the entire scene play out. He had been sitting up in his family’s living room since the previous night waiting to see how everything would go down. He hadn’t expected the old woman to die, though. Frankly, it was pretty goddamn disappointing. He didn’t feel the same rush he thought he should have after seeing the old woman find her dismembered dog. He leaned back in his chair and sipped at a bottle of peach Snapple like the little prick he was.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He now felt a terrible boredom overcome him. He had, up until that point done just about every devious thing a terrible teenager could do. He had assaulted his neighbours in their sleep. Attacked children. Set the local stray cats on fire. With each act, he increased his level of inhuman cruelty, but he now felt at a loss. He needed something new to catch the same buzz he felt the previous night when he cut up that pooch. No. He wanted it. He craved it.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>It shouldn’t surprise you that it took him all of two minutes to immediately arrive at kidnapping and murder. He considered in his mind whom his new prey should be. At first, he considered one of the girls with whom he was in the Espionage Track. But, he quickly discarded that notion. Any single one of them would likely give him a mouthful of shattered teeth the moment he tried anything. He needed somebody who wouldn’t put up much of a fight. A weakling. He needed someone who could go missing for a few weeks and leave everybody else none the wiser. As he sat their, sugar water dripping from his distended tongue he thought of the name of his new target. He’d go after Temple Pierce.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>An excellent target as any, but he considered whether or not he could get his rocks off with Pierce. He, like most of the school, was unsure of whether Pierce was a boy or a girl. He supposed it shouldn’t matter, but on the other hand, he also didn’t want to seem gay. Then again, Temple was pretty enough for that to be a non-issue.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Miriam Brooks and Beatrix Kuroki - Strange Signals</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Miriam and Beatrix try to unravel whatever is behind a mysterious radio station that has only recently appeared.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>The screech of a pickup’s tires echoed through the small town of Kino, frightening children and small animals alike as Beatrix drove around town. To the outside viewer, it might have looked like she was having a fit and driving around in circles for no real reason. The sun beat down across the midwestern town. Intense heat. An unknown sense of fear and loathing gripped them. But, for Kino that was normal.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The radio drifted into a brief sweet spot and a voice began to speak through the sea of static on Beatrix’s speakers, “...and on the fourth day -BUUZZZZZZZ-terrible burden upon his head and he will be known to you, dear child.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>For the past month, the signal had been bouncing around on the town’s radios. Nobody seemed to care. Bea suspected initially that it was some of the spies living in the town sending coded messages to each other. She and her father regarded them as a knitting circle full of unimportant secrets. But a cursory investigation of the other students in the espionage track revealed that nobody knew or cared about it. To her, it sounded like the same sinister pseudo-Christian claptrap you could hear on half a dozen other Hoosier radio stations. It felt different, though. If that makes sense. Like it had an unknown edge to it that she couldn’t place. She didn’t like not being in the loop. Not knowing something made her antsy.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She gave a hard left turn and drove out to the Weyland Creek housing development. Row after row of the prefab houses. Each very nearly identical. Available in any colour you like. As long as that colour is flat grey. She found herself coming to a squealing halt in the middle of the street though. Right in the middle of the road were a bunch of bright yellow traffic cones erected around a single, unopened manhole.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She did a turn and slowly parallel parked her truck a brisk walk away from her target destination. She took a jog and found herself at the front door of the Brooks residence. She took a brief moment to straighten out her clothes to give the impression that she was a presentable person and then gave a nice firm knock on the flat grey door.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The man who answered the door was Dwayne Brooks. The most tired person in his family, if not the entire town. He had deep brown eyes that were only just bloodshot from a lack of sleep and a five-yard stare. He breathed a small sigh before putting on his most mild-mannered smile.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Ummm, Beatrix, right?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yes, sir,” she said. “Is Miriam home by any chance.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The mild-mannered smile quickly faded, “That’s tough to say. Kind of.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“How can somebody be kind of home?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“My daughter is currently in the sewers,” he said in the same cadence as most men his age might if they were talking about how poorly his favourite baseball team was doing.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Beatrix paused and she felt a numbness set in her brain as she tried to work out just what the hell he had said, “I’m sorry, what?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah, she’s in the sewer currently.” His and Beatrix’s eyes went over to the bright yellow traffick cones surrounding the manhole. “She went down there this morning because the library had an insufficient map of the sewers. I will be dead by sixty if she keeps on like this.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>As though summoned by the mere repetition of her name, the manhole cover was slid aside and Beatrix emerged. She was dressed in a very cheap dollar store rain poncho, rubber pants, and an unseasonable brown owl beanie that hid her crown of curly brown hair. She was covered in filth and sweat and made a rather loud groan as she hoised her body out of the sewer. The children of the neighbourhood screamed and fled, mistaking her for some sort of horrible sewer monster.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam’s father felt himself age a year in a second as he watched her daughter walk up to the house. Each step she made carrying with it a very loud ‘schplop’.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>As Miriam came to a stop at the house, she stood next to Miriam, a smile on her face. The smell of the sewers wafted off of her in great waves. As much as Beatrix liked her it took every ounce of effort for her not to immediately vomit. Miriam’s father, on the other hand, seemed largely unaffected.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Hey, Bea. What’s up?” she said.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Bea responded with a thumbs up, still fighting back the urge to vomit.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I just...Are you okay, Miri?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Never better, why?” she said as though she wasn’t covered in sewage.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Go in the back and rinse off with the hose. Then go take a shower.” he sighed the sigh of a man who had learned long ago to accept his daughter’s eccentricities, but not at the expense of his freshly shampooed carpet.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam happily ‘schplopped’ off to the backyard and Beatrix could hear her fiddling around with the garden hose.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Do you care if I come in and wait?” She asked as the stench of the sewer left with its carrier.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Yeah, just please mind the floor,” he said, stepping inside to allow her room to come in.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The inside of the house was almost unnaturally clean and orderly. Perfectly colour coordinated and the air smelled like pine with the faintest hint of lavender. She took a seat on the living room’s loveseat while Dwayne Brooks vanished off to go do whatever he was up to before she arrived. She heard the back door open and the father and daughter exchanged words that she didn’t care about or pay attention to. She might have been in the process of espionage training, but she wasn’t a damned eavesdropper.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam stepped past her and smiled at her, “You’re here about the weird radio signal, come talk to me in my room after I shower.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>After a few minutes in silence as she tried to work out how exactly Miriam had worked that out without either of them having to speak, she heard her call down from her bedroom. Miriam took up the stairs with sudden speed and excitement.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam’s room was a bizarre reflection of how her father kept the rest of the house. It was organized...In a way. In the corner, right next to Miriam’s wall mounted desk there was a pyramid made of emptied energy drink cans. A rather large pyramid at that and on the bed was a series of laundry piles with a sticky note that read, ‘to be put away’.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“How in the hell did you know I was here about the radio signal?” Beatrix asked as soon as she stepped into the room to face Miriam.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Miriam was seated in her desk chair, with her back to the door, turning as soon as Beatrix spoke to give off an air of being dramatic and mysterious. It kind of worked, if Beatrix was honest.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“As I crawled out of the sewer I heard static on your truck’s speakers. You always have your radio tuned into the punk station in New Albany and right where we are is a very ideal spot for that signal to come in clearly. Also, it doesn’t exactly help that you showed your hand by asking me how I knew.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Beatrix searched for a comeback, but she couldn’t help but laugh, “You arrogant ass.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her eyes drifted over to a series of corkboards that Miriam had above her desk. Small little mysteries and local puzzles that she was working on. The blue yarn connected to printed out articles about local religious radio stations.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“So, what do you think it is?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Not a clue. That’s the fun part, isn’t it?” Miriam got up and did a walk around her room. She was dressed in a pair of old sweatpants and a bleach stained Janelle Monáe</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>t-shirt, “For all I know it’s a new Christian or gospel style station that some poor fool’s erected out in the woods.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“But you and I know that’s bullshit.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Not in so many words, but yeah. There’s something different about it. It lacks the flavour of your average fire and brimstone radio program.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“It’s a puzzle.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Exactly.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“So, now my question is do you want to go solve it together?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>A smirk crossed Miriam’s face and she went over to her closet and dug out a strange device that looked like pieces of a radio attached to an old metal cane, “I thought you’d never ask.”</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Inez Darío: Spy Anxiety</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Our spy cannot sleep at night.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>Inez found herself unable to sleep. Despite the cool Autumn air, she found herself staring at her bedroom ceiling. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out why this assignment, why this particular task has stricken her with a feeling of unknowable anxiety. She gave her phone a glance and the little white digital numbers told her that it was three in the morning. Fuck. She might as well get ready for school at that point God only knows that she wouldn't be able to get much sleep.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She got up from her bed. Got dressed and made her way into the kitchen, only to find that the lights were on and her dad was sitting alone and sipping coffee at the dinner table.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Marcos Darío was by no stretch of the human imagination and ugly man. When he was younger he looked more like the sort of man you might see modelling suits in a catalogue. Now he had a comfortable build, a crop of thinning brown hair that already had faint hints of grey, and a great branching scar that ran away from his glass left eye down to his collarbone.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>While time had been kind to him, life had not.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Marcos looked up and jumped slightly as his daughter into the room, "Jesus! I'm so sorry what, time is it? You can't possibly be getting ready for school now, could you?"</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"Might as well, I mean kind of like hasn't really been sleeping well."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>He made a look of concern that would have been on any other man with that kind of strong jaw, but it suited him well in a strange way.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“What's troubling you?" He said as he stood up and started to prepare for her a cup of coffee. Thankfully, her father drank coffee like a normal person, unlike principal Pine and his crude oil concoction.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She took a seat at the dinner table and her father followed her soon after, "Mister Pine's given me this… Task and I just haven't been able to get a handle on it."</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Her father muttered the name of Mr Pine under his breath, before giving her a small and mildly reassuring smile, "What about the task is bothering you?"</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>"The whole thing has me feeling in a bad way. Nothing like I feel threatened way more like I feel anxious, but not scared more like I'm concerned that what I'm doing is kind of messed up. And on top of it, I haven't a single clue how to begin. I have no idea about how to go about spying on and learning about Temple Pierce."</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Inez Darío and Temple Pierce - A Prelude To Something Awful</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Temple speaks. Inez and Temple finally sit down and attempt to work things out.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div class="">
  <p>Pierce was seated at a single, empty table in the school’s library. A book open in front of them, but they were not paying attention to it. Their focus was on the girl in the leather jacket that walked in and took a seat directly across from them.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She spoke in a calm, but authoritative manner, “Pierce.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Darío,” they responded in their flat monotone, which sounded devoid of emotion, mostly by circumstance rather than design.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>The pair had made plans to meet in the school library after school so that their conversation could not be interrupted by unwanted ears. Save for the school’s librarian Clarissa Sheffield. But, the old woman had a habit of keeping secrets. She was Jimmy Carter’s spymaster back in the day, after all.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I suppose we should get down to the brass tax of the situation. I know that you are not going to stop spying on me.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“That should go without saying.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Pierce almost smiled, “Indeed. Although, I must say that I admire you somewhat for it. I know that it is simply an assignment to be graded to you.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“True. So, why are you suddenly speaking to me, now?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I speak around those I am comfortable near. You have been tailing me for the last month. Might I ask, is it standard for you spies to be so damned frightening?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Forgive me if I don’t catch your meaning, Pierce.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Since I started to notice you following me. I have been approached twice  by you in this library, you have insisted on sitting nearby and staring at me as I eat (Which is something I will come back to.)  and staying only a handful of feet behind me as I cut through the school halls.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“That all? For all you know I could have been some lovestruck idiot with a crush.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“What sort of infatuated moron just approaches people while they are minding their own business in a library?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Lots. It’s sort of a thing that normal people do from time to time.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>She watched part of Temple’s face move slightly before settling back in it’s almost frozen, unemotive look, “That is worrying. But, you are not working alone and that is the part that puzzles me.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Inez shot them a look of confusion, “What are you talking about, Pierce?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Do not play dumb. You have more brainpower than Pine’s other agents.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I’m telling you the truth, Pierce. I was assigned this as a solo thing by Principal Pine himself. Nobody else knows that I’m assigned to you.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Pierce’s eyes took a moment to widen. Inez had noticed on one occasion that they had the odd mutation of being heterochromatic. The left eye a dull green and the right a very pale blue. They both ventured off, away from Inez’s shoulder to the doors of the library, like they were expecting somebody else.</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Say I believe you. Who is the other person who’s been following me, then?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“I couldn’t tell you, Pierce. Up until this point, I assumed that Mister Pine had given me this assignment, alone. Do you recognize who it is at all?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“No, I am admittedly not good with faces. I have a mild sense of face blindness. Any face that I do not pay attention to for long periods gets filed away as unimportant.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>“Then how do you know you are being followed by somebody else?”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>Inez watched as Pierce’s expression softened. They pulled their cellphone out of their pocket and opened up the images.  “I thought, initially that it was some form of psyops.  The pair of you trying to get me out of my head.”</p>
</div><div class="">
  <p>They slid the phone over to her. On the screen was a single image. It was the head of a rabbit. An all-white, angora rabbit. Expensive looking as hell. It was only just the head. The rest of it was gone and it appeared to be nailed through its floppy ears to a piece of oak if she had to guess.</p>
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  <p>“What the fuck?” Her stoic expression melted into a look of terror as she looked over to Temple.</p>
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  <p>“For the past few days, somebody has been leaving those in my yard. I found that nailed to the door of my shed, just last night.”</p>
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  <p>“So, this is why you were adamant about our meeting. You thought that I was apart of this psycho shit?”</p>
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  <p>“A strange girl starts following you around out of the blue along with some other menacing creep. Do not tell me that you would not feel just a little suspicious.”</p>
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  <p>“I’m not strange. You are. You don’t look people in the eyes when you speak and you’re silent and creepy whenever you’re in a room full of people.”</p>
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  <p>“I am autistic. Eye contact makes me feel uncomfortable and talking to strange people unnerves me. Is that why Pine asked you to follow me? Because I do not speak to anyone?”</p>
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  <p>Inez suddenly felt like a huge asshole, “He asked me to because he thought you might be a threat.”</p>
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  <p>“How could I possibly be a threat to anyone, Darío? Did you ever ask yourself that? What have I possibly done to warrant such suspicion?” Pierce stood up and calmly pushed in their chair, “You know what, I do not care. You and the principal can continue your games of espionage all you want, but I will have no part of it. I am going to solve my stalker issue on my own.”</p>
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  <p>After their meeting, Temple Pierce vanished off the face of the earth. The did not move out of Kino. They went missing. Inez found herself in the office of Principal Pine, as the two of them tried to work out just where in the Hell they could have gone.</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Inez Darío: Get Rid of The Pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Our spy has to deal with the crippling weight of her actions. Also, she fights a bear.</p>
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  <p>She tore off a little square from the blotter and slid it onto her tongue as she leaned back on her sleeping bag. Inez allowed herself a few small comforts. She sat still on day four of her self imposed isolation in the woods. She carried with her only what she needed. A bag of protein bars, sleeping bag, tent, hunting knife, a sheet of high powered blotter acid, earbuds,  a phone and a solar charger. Enough, she thought.</p>
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  <p>She put in her earbuds and listened to the voice of Aaron Mahnke as he talked of some cryptic historical artefact. His voice very quickly began to sound distant and distorted, turning from real words to unintelligible baby talk. The fire beside her flickered and she felt her ego slowly melting away, turning into a puddle. The fire’s light showed off the hidden colours of the woods at night and she couldn’t help but laugh a bit to herself for feeling like a fantastical voyeur.</p>
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  <p>In an instant, a great screech sounded in her ears and she tore her headphones off and cast her eyes to the night sky above her. The whole forest was lit then in glorious and unnatural colours as a great streak of rainbow energy seemed to carve a great bolt across the void. She felt her heart pounding violently in her chest as every part of screamed to run away. But she couldn’t, she could only stare up at the great writhing mass of glowing rainbow flesh that festered and wiggled like a maggot-infested wound.</p>
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  <p>The rainbow horror vanished and she was left in the dark again, staring up at the vast sea of stars. She dropped to her knees and proceeded to vomit. By the time it had ended she was left shaking in the fetal position on the ground with bits of undigested protein bar caking her lips. Had she been in her right mind she would have gotten up and broken into Ryan Murphy’s house for selling her the bad acid. Little prick. She ought to have beat the piss out of him.</p>
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  <p>As the sun rose the next day she found that the drug had begun to wear away and she was left feeling pretty alright, all things considered. Day five had begun and she was ready. She knew what needed to be done. Kino had presented her with a challenge. Except, not really. She chose to see her giving herself the task as Kino giving her a challenge. She felt driven and she needed to do or risk being a martyr to herself and the rest of the espionage track.</p>
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  <p>She was going to kill Alverez’s Bear.</p>
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  <p>She had first heard of the bear in the sixth grade when her dad was freaking out because one of the science track’s instructors had lost his shit and decided in his infinite wisdom and blind rage to construct a being of enormous and unnatural cruelty. He named the beast, Mister Fuzzy-Hands. Cute name, right? Well, Mister Fuzzy-Hands tore through an entire farm’s worth of cattle when it broke free of its cage in Alverez’s shed. Alverez was lucky he wasn’t murdered by either the bear or the government for what he did.</p>
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  <p>Inez travelled deeper into the woods, putting some distance between her and the campsite. As a young child, she used to wander these same woods and dream of the world of possibilities. It was infinite. The whole world laid out right in front of her. But, recent events had left her thinking of the woods a place of horrors. Where nightmare beings and serial murder classmates lurked behind every tree. The cave was an old thing. Astor’s Maw. God, that was a fitting name. The mouth of the cave was littered with a series of jagged points that caused it to resemble the stony mouth of some ancient beast from mythology. She drew her knife and ventured in. To her death or her glory.</p>
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  <p>She ran her thumb along the back of the blade. She ran it until the cold steel felt warm. It made the knife feel more like a part of her, she supposed. She had come to envy the knife, to a degree. It was everything she had been taught to be up to that point. Uncle Sam’s cold unfeeling sword. The knight of fair Queen Columbia herself. She was a tool of the government in the making and this was it. This was the final stage of her being forged. A scalpel. A great and violent blunt tool of the state. A stranger in the dark.</p>
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  <p>The bear slept in a chamber just beneath a hole in the cave’s ceiling that illuminated the great beast almost perfectly. The light danced on its purple fur as it wheezed through tumour ridden lungs. It was asleep as she had been a mere hour ago. Alverez’s Bear slept peacefully. Part of Inez wanted to cut her losses and leave. But, she knew what needed to be done and she certainly wasn’t going to miss out on a fair fight.</p>
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  <p>“Hey, get up!” she shouted at the bear.</p>
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  <p>It’s great tennis ball sized eyes opened up. They were bulbous and compound, seemingly made from an unnatural number of bright green cat eyes. Inez felt a stinging pain in her busted nose as the bear rose on its hind crab-like legs and felt her heart turn into a rhythm drum as the beast’s great ape hands held onto stalactites and shattered them in its grip. It was bigger than she had expected and she looked up at Death itself and the two ran at one another.</p>
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